


demons to slay (but i've got lots of them)

by dollfacerobot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Post-Azkaban, Pre-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollfacerobot/pseuds/dollfacerobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reason why Andromeda is Sirius' favourite cousin? The competition really isn't that hard to beat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	demons to slay (but i've got lots of them)

**Author's Note:**

> 1019 words, unbeta'd and unedited.

i.

 

Azkaban had given him enough time to think things through – not only things like life and death and honour and bravery and _wrong and right_ , but all the things. Twelve years are a long time, and he'd left one prison only to return to another just a few months later; the house he grew up in, and the time there ticked away just as slowly.

Grimmauld Place was as much a prison as he remembered it, even worse, it was a prison not only for the living, but for the dead as well, and they came to him every night.

So he had thought about more or less everyone and everything in his life – he'd cursed his family, all of them, even Uncle Alphard, he'd engraved his sorrow for James so deep into his heart that he thought it might never have another shape again, and he'd written vengeance across it a thousand times. If he'd carved it in with a knife it couldn't have been more visible, or permanent.

It wasn't a promise or a commitment, it was his life now.

 

At night he counted everyone on his fingers and the friends he had that lived all fit on one hand.

 

ii.

 

His visit to his cousin's Andromeda's place was more a formality than a wish he had. He'd thought of her in Azkaban, of course, but then he'd thought of everyone, even Tom, the landlord of the Leaky Cauldron.

It was unsettling how much like her elder sister she looked, but the lack of fanatism fury had left her eyes untouched of madness and instead had carved lines of laughter around them. She greeted him, her husband, the muggle, by her side.

What unsettled him more was how at peace she was.

 

They didn't hug, but it wasn't entirely awkward, either. Andromeda brought him tea and told him about her daughter who had recently finished her auror training. He knew Tonks, of course, if only briefly.

As he looked at her house and garden and husband, her life, it still irked him that he'd never considered her one to pull something like this off – run away, break with the family, marry a muggle and live a normal life, away from the war, away from a world where words like „blood purity“ existed.

The truth was that she hadn't been meant to do that. He had. He'd been sorted into Gryffindor, branded a traitor for everyone to see, turned his coat and his back to the family. He'd run off when he was still in school and never talked to any of them again.

Now most of his friends were dead and he was a fugitive on the run.

Meanwhile, Andromeda asked him what tea he preferred.

 

iii.

 

They talked about unimportant things; she said she was sorry for his loss.

He stared at her from across the room. _As if_ she could seriously understand a loss that still pained him every day after more than 12 years had gone by.

But she looked back, her expression sincere, and it dawned on him again. He didn't like Andromeda, he didn't like her at all. Not her rebellion and not her entitled posture; not the way she'd just chosen to turn a back to this war as if people like her, like them, weren't part of the problem.

 

iv.

 

They took a walk in the garden. He would have liked the forest better but they couldn't leave the property if he wanted to remain in his human form. He was still a chased man. Andromeda didn't seem to mind, she sent out trimming spells towards flowers and bushes occasionally. Yet again, it surprised him how at ease she was.

There seemed to be something on her mind though.

„Sirius“, she said, „I don't know if you know, but when Regulus died...“

It didn't actually _surprise_ him; they would have to talk family at some point, it was just inevitable. But the way she said their names so shortly after one another bothered him; it bothered him that she seemed to think he still had anything to do with this family, with his brother.

„I don't want to talk about Regulus“, he muttered.

„But I think you should-“

„Don't.“, he said. „Don't.“

For the first time, he wondered whether she still had contact with her sisters, whether – and it was almost an impossible thought, blasphemy – she had had contact to his mother previous to her death.

 

He'd always assumed that she'd cut the ties as he had, but suddenly, it all seemed possible. Even plausible.

He'd never know what it was she had wanted to tell him even though he burned to.

 

v.

 

She hadn't played by the rules.

(Not that he had.

 

But this was different.)

She'd been sorted into Slytherin. Slytherin Slytherin Slytherin. Evil backstabbing royal pureblood Slytherin.

She'd been marked as one of their family, a True Black, a good daughter.

She'd been just like everyone else.

She didn't get to just fall in love and decide maybe this life was not the one she wanted after all. She wasn't a rebel out of conviction; she was just a girl who had fallen in love. She hadn't cared about any of it, really, she'd just cared about herself. She shouldn't have just gotten away with it the way she had.

 

He hadn't.

 

vi.

 

The visit ended soon then, and Sirius found himself standing at the gate, looking back. He watched Andromeda and Ted walk back into their safe cage, their nest. They turned their backs on the world and shut the door and all was well.

And everyone he had loved was dead.

He wished, he was, too.

 

They had been living fast and they had died young, all of them. They had been meant to die young, go down fighting, take a Death Eater or two with them.

But he was still alive even if he wasn't meant to, and maybe that was worse.

 

Surely that was worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Noah Gunderson's song "David".


End file.
